


my north, my south, my east and west

by hamiltrashed



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamiltrashed/pseuds/hamiltrashed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles died with untidy hair and a laugh on his lips. And Derek broke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my north, my south, my east and west

**Author's Note:**

> 'He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
> My working week and my Sunday rest,  
> My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song...'  
> {W.H. Auden}

Stiles died with untidy hair and a laugh on his lips. He died with a challenge on his tongue in the face of his own ruin, and courage he had always had and always shown. He died with a gracefulness that boggled the mind. Derek would have expected him to go messy because Stiles was messy in life, but death claimed him in a subtle ballet.

Grief did not come first. First came denial, creeping in to protect his heart and mind from a devastating blow. Denial told him that what he had seen wasn’t real. Denial told him that he wasn’t even conscious. Denial painted him a picture: he would wake in a matter of minutes from this nightmare, push it away into a dark corner of his mind where all his nightmares involving Stiles resided, and curl up closer to pale skin prickling with goosebumps in the morning cold. He would kiss Stiles’ flesh warm again, press his ear over Stiles’ heart, and deafen himself with the steady beating. But denial crept away when truth screamed so loud it could no longer be ignored.

After denial came rage. Rage was easy to find for Derek; he had always slipped it on as easy as a coat when he needed it, and he had never zipped it up as easy as he did now. There was a swift and clean and simple brutality in how he killed the Alpha that had gutted Stiles. When it was over, he expected to feel nothing, but instead the rage swept through him like a fire until he had nothing left to feed it with and it burnt out. He decorated the doorstep of the Alpha’s pack with his body, painted the doormat with his blood, and walked away, his retribution complete. It was more than retaliation, it was justice, and the stink of blood clung to him for days but Derek reveled in it. And then rage took its leave and Derek could no longer stomach the metallic warmth that flooded his nostrils with every breath.

Grief didn’t come until almost a week after they had put Stiles in the ground. The funeral had been beautiful, but Derek knew they had expected him to cry and he just couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He didn’t really know. He sat between a weeping Sheriff and a weeping Scott with a stony face and his own claws digging so deep into his thighs that after a while he could no longer feel it. The burial had been equally as gorgeous, with the interment at dusk and the songs sung around the graveside with candles and half of Beacon Hills in attendance. But still he did not cry. 

The grief only hit him when he stopped sleeping in the woods, when he found the guts to go back to the loft and the first thing that hit him when he walked through the door was the scent of Stiles. It was there on everything, so strong that it was like he had been there just moments before Derek arrived. And only then did he collapse, sinking to the floor awash in anguish. He cried for what felt like days until he had no more tears to give. He made it to the bed, could still see the other side messed up from the morning of the day Stiles had died, and pulled Stiles’ pillow to his face, inhaled, breathed him in so deeply he thought his lungs would burst. 

Denial and even rage were gentler than grief. Denial cradled his head in its hands, and rage patted his shoulder and congratulated him on his revenge, but grief tore into him with zeal, rearranged his insides until they felt all wrong every time he thought of Stiles, and punched him in the gut each time he dared to breathe easier. Grief shook him to the bone, wrenched his emotions apart and inserted itself into each one, and made every movement so painful that Derek wanted to cry out over and over and over until his voice no longer worked, until his tongue was dry with protesting the utter wreckage of his soul. 

He did not trust himself to do anything but lie there while the waves of grief crashed over him, wishing the tide would never come back to kiss the shore again because he had never felt kisses so brutal, so aggressive, so ruthless and severe. He would not let anyone comfort him, would not let Scott come to him with fierce and unending optimism, would not let Lydia bring her tears and sympathy to his door, would not let Allison give him her understanding. Peter would only try to say the right thing and say all the wrong ones like he always did.

None of them could understand. This was a pain unique to loving and losing a person not only from whom you swore you would never part, but from whom you knew you _could_ never part. Not just a lover, but a mate, a literal other half. And the swell of agony was ever rising and bursting anew, minute after minute, and there was nobody who could understand the depths with which Derek loved Stiles. There were relationships like Allison's and Scott’s that were love but they were butterfly kisses and midnight sneak-outs for backseat sex and hand holds under the table at dinner love, and while it wasn't less, it was so ordinary. Derek’s love for Stiles was extraordinary, was so powerful it could catch his breath in his throat whenever he so much as thought about him, was so ardent and intense it could have moved a mountain, and god, Derek would move mountains just to have him back for even a fraction of a second. He would destroy every star that still shone bright just to put his star back in the sky.

A part of him knew that someday there would be bitter allowance of the truth into his life. Not acceptance. Never acceptance. Acceptance led to coexisting with the truth, to eventually forgetting it was there, and Derek could never forget. Only once in a lifetime is there someone like Stiles, and he had gone, and for all the pain he had left in his wake, he might have taken Derek with him. Derek wished he had. Living without him was too sad, too hard, too much. He had been Derek's everything and so it made sense now that he had nothing and was nothing. 

Stiles died with untidy hair and a laugh on his lips. And happy endings were a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't written for quite a while and I was just lying around listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks, and Harry's untidy hair was mentioned and for some reason I thought about Stiles and then this came out of nowhere. I'm sorry. I really am. I'm a terrible person. I'll try to write something happy next to make up for it.


End file.
